


An Apple a Day

by GVSpurlock



Category: Baby Driver (2017)
Genre: Abuser's Perspective, Blood and Gore, F/M, Gaslighting, Monstrous Shithead Kevin Spacey, Non-Consensual Kissing, Non-Consensual Non-Sexual Bondage, References to Drugs, references to masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 11:34:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GVSpurlock/pseuds/GVSpurlock
Summary: His story was written the night he boosted that Merc and discovered he wasn’t a Ghost after all. Just a Baby. Covered in a mess of his own making and helpless, buckled into a carseat.





	An Apple a Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Largishcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Largishcat/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, dear Largishcat! Thank you for the wonderful prompt and your continually inspiring Tumblr. You have impeccable, intimidatingly good taste, so I hope this is to your liking!
> 
> Hello to the elephant in the room: this fic was requested and conjured in the days and weeks before Kevin Spacey was justly exposed as a monstrous shithead. And part of what I connected to in Largishcat’s prompt is that Doc was a monstrous shithead, too.
> 
> In this fic, Doc engages in some seriously creepy and cruel behavior and has also stolen Matt Lauer’s door-locking button (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/about-that-secret-button-in-matt-lauers-office/547106/), if for a slightly different purpose. A portion of this fic is written from Doc’s perspective and it’s disturbing.
> 
> Trigger warnings for Kevin Spacey, gaslighting, gore, nonconsensual bondage and kissing, and non-explicit references to drugs and masturbation.

Doc is, unbelievably, packing up his diecast model cars. He doesn’t look up.

“It’s over, kid, I ain’t open,” he says, folksy charm dropped. The cold, detached drawl and utter lack of attention stings.

“I need those tapes,” Baby tells him earnestly.

“I’m not giving you those tapes.”

Baby looks down at the bag he’s holding, a fortune in money orders in the right hands. Which are certainly not his. “I have the money orders. I’ll trade you for one of those tapes.”

Doc pauses his packing and finally looks up, non-diecast car wheels spinning. “One?”

“One,” Baby says.

“You’re the worst fucking negotiator I ever met, Baby.”

That’s probably true, but… “I don’t want anything else.”

“Bull _shit_.”

Debbie walks in and reaches for Baby. He can’t hear the Challenger idling over the static in his ears and the galloping of his heart. “It’s okay,” she murmurs. “Let’s just go.”

Doc’s point hits home all at once. He wants a lot of things, starting with the impossible and ending with some stuff that Doc could probably help him with.

Instead of that, what comes out is: “I shot Buddy.” 

“Congratulations. Then you only have every clean _and_ dirty cop after you.” He eyes the two of them and pumps the semi. “You gonna shoot me, too?”

The gun makes Debbie nervous and she tenses, arms going tight around him. This isn’t her world and it makes him sick that he’s dragged her into it. The line from Monsters, Inc. that worked back at the apartment bubbles up, but he keeps his mouth shut and shakes his head. Who says he can’t learn?

Sirens, faint, in the distance, send a chill down his spine. Doc seems to be wrapping up his packing, but hasn’t touched the money orders Baby tossed at him like a life preserver.

“I want out,” Baby says, hanging on to Debbie tightly.

“Good for you,” Doc replies dismissively. 

“I want… I want Deb… Debora… out,” Baby corrects.

Debbie, tenser still, opens her mouth to protest.

“So you want the waitress out. And a tape. Anything else?”

What the fuck kind of question is that? A universe of potential asks rushes through him.

“Don’t you dare, Baby. No one decides what I do but me,” she tells him, staring daggers. The heat in her voice burns, but not enough to touch the icy fear for her that’s gripped him tight. An important request occurs to him. 

“Joe’s off-limits.”

Doc approaches and gets in their personal space, right in Baby’s face. Debbie might as well not exist for him, but Baby breaks their embrace and maneuvers her away from whatever this encounter is about to be.

“Do you even know what you’re negotiating for, kid?”

Baby can see himself in Doc’s glasses, looking completely poleaxed. There is no way to answer that question that won’t sound impossibly naive, so he swallows hard and waits.

“You’re going to hand yourself over to me. When I say jump, you won’t have to ask “how high?” because you’ll already know. And if you don’t know, you’ll make an educated fucking guess because you’re a smart kid. You won’t be my lucky charm anymore because luck won’t have a goddamn thing to do with it. You’ll just be mine and you’ll _thank_ me for it.” The fact that he still has a gun in his hands is the least terrifying thing about him at this moment. “You think you had to make a big-boy decision before? Welcome to the world, _Miles_.”

The Butcher’s three enormous goons burst in while Baby’s world shatters and remakes itself. They aren’t even aiming their weapons and Doc’s already blasting.

One goes down with a shot to its center mass; a second shot and its head is simply gone, a welter of gore in its place as Debbie screams.

The second goon gets off a shot that clips Doc on the arm. He curses, returns fire, and down it goes.

The third hesitates, looks at its fellows dropped in a matter of seconds, drops its weapon, and flees. Doc shoots it in the back and it lies still in the doorway, dead or smart enough to pretend. He fires again and the now-corpse twitches. The sirens are growing louder and anxiety thrums through Baby, tinnitus exacerbated by the crack of the rifle.

“People say that your skeleton is inside you,” a friend from school had told him once, high and profound off some shitty weed. “But really, you’re inside your skeleton. You’re a brain.”

He feels it now, like a brain, not a body.

“What’s it gonna be, Baby?” Doc asks, casual, prodding at the wound on his left arm, returning to the nickname that doesn’t make Baby’s world bottom out. Doc’s still holding the rifle, implied threat verging on more of a statement.

Debbie has crumpled in on herself, crying. Baby crouches down and embraces her.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I love you.”

She shoves at him furiously, the expression on her face so reminiscent of Joe’s it takes his breath away.

The world he’d worked so hard to escape, the world of Bacchanalia and bandit glass and butter-soft driving gloves, beckons.

It doesn’t attract him (does it?) but there’s no space for him delivering pizzas, loitering at diners, or even road tripping in a car they couldn’t afford with a plan they didn’t have. He wouldn’t know self-determination if it smashed into him with a truck.

His story was written the night he boosted that Merc and discovered he wasn’t a Ghost after all. Just a Baby. Covered in a mess of his own making and helpless, buckled into a carseat. 

“Yes,” he says. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Doc’s already on the phone making arrangements. He covers the mic with his shoulder, extracts something from his bag, and throws it at Baby: “Tie her up.”

Debbie stiffens in outrage and tries to leave while Baby watches the nylon rope hit him in the chest and fall to the ground.

Doc hits a button that closes and locks the door and snaps, “ _Now_.” He uncovers the phone, recites a string of numbers, and hangs up.

The girl’s banging on the door and Baby’s just staring stupidly.

“I’m not accustomed to explaining myself, but we’re on the clock. The po-leese are gonna descend on this place like a swarm of angry blue hornets as soon as they track that piece of junk muscle car you stole. She’s not coming with us and if you don’t want her going down for you, accomplice, equal participant, whatever the fuck they can make stick, then you’re going to tie her up, gentle as you like, and leave her here for the cops to find. And you, girl, you mention one word about me, and your boy here is gonna be in a world of hurt. _Do you understand me?_ ”

It would take a stronger spirit than either of them possess to stand up to the force of personality imbued in those four words and the girl actually helps Baby tie her up, since he has no fucking clue what he’s doing. Well. That’s fine. They can work on that.

She’s furious, even faced with Baby’s puppy-dog eyes.

They’re a lovely pair, entwined as they are in sloppy bondage, dark blonde and light brown and so careful with each other. 

The impulse toward cruelty is impossible to resist: “Now, kiss.”

He sees the very moment Baby loses her as he obeys. She turns her head to the side and his pout connects with the soft skin of her cheek.

She’s not vicious enough to spill whatever meager information she has to the police to hurt Baby, but she’s also not going to be welcoming him back if he breaks his word and returns. Baby’s trapped himself quite neatly.

No time to rub it in and rubbing one out will wait for later. He dangles the keys over Baby’s head — a toy, a tease, a threat, a promise. Baby tears his eyes from the girl, who refuses to look at him, and takes them.

 

* * *

 

Baby has never been very good with words and this moment is beyond him. So he does what he does best. He stands back up. And he drives.


End file.
